Kylo Ren and the First Order Aren’t Who They Seem in STAR WARS

Ah. The truth is out.

Ever since it was recently revealed that the mysterious villain of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren, is a member of the ‘Knights of Ren’ and that that isn’t his birth name, fans have been scrambling to come up with a credible theory for who the hell he is and who the hell they are. We made a pretty good attempt at connecting the dots but didn’t really get far into what the Knights of Ren are. I originally thought they could be the Inquisitors, but since writing that up I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reading theories about them, and based on all of that I came to the conclusion that they are our new Sith.

The Sith are dead. Gone. Turned to dust. All new movies post-Return of the Jedi will not feature the Sith – probably not, anyway. They are a new Dark Side Order who want to build upon thousands of years of Sith work and create something new, although I’m still not sure what that is. This is the reason why Ren doesn’t go by the ‘Darth’ title; that’s a Sith thing. The Knights of Ren are the new kids on the block, and to be one of them you take a special last name rather than a first. Fortunately, J.J. Abrams has kinda confirmed this.

It wasn’t too long ago that he sat down with Entertainment Weekly to reveal spoilery details about the movie, but now he’s done the same with Empire and we have even more hot deets on Kylo Ren. First off…

“Kylo Ren is not a Sith.”

Well, there you have it.

“He works under Supreme Leader Snoke, who is a powerful figure on the Dark Side of the Force.”

Wait – another one?!

At least I don’t have to dance around it in articles anymore.

It’s been common knowledge for a long while now amongst those in-the-know and those who regularly check fansites (that’s me) that Serkis’ character is a big villain in the movie and probably the rest of the trilogy. We already knew his name and that he’s motion-capture, and we heard his raspy voice in the first teaser talking about the Force so I imagine a lot of people had this all figured out anyway. Snoke is fulfilling the ‘Emperor’ role of the film. Note that Abrams doesn’t refer to him as a Sith, either. We have a master and an apprentice, but neither hold the title of Darth.

Kylo Ren’s not a Sith but he carries around a homemade red lightsaber and is a Dark Side user. In your average Star Wars movie or show there would be no questions asked about who he aligns himself with, but this is a new era for new audiences and they want to follow new stuff rather than old remnants. Speaking of remnants…

It turns out that the First Order may not be the Empire’s unwanted leftovers like we thought.

“That all came out of conversations about what would have happened if the Nazis all went to Argentina but then started working together again? What could be born of that? Could The First Order exist as a group that actually admired The Empire? Could the work of The Empire be seen as unfulfilled? And could Vader be a martyr? Could there be a need to see through what didn’t get done?”

A martyr? Well, fuck – this is way cooler. When you cut back all the oppression and Sith crap, most officials in the Empire probably just wanted to instill order in the galaxy. That could be exactly what the First Order want; there is no standing government by the time of The Force Awakens and the Empire did alright for twenty years. All the rebels did was destroy it all and leave the galaxy in a state of cold war for three decades. They’re supposed to be our heroes, but the First Order aren’t looking so crazy now after all.

At the top of the food chain would be Kylo Ren and Snoke who actually want to create another Force-ruled government, however I’ve really got nothing on how that could be different from the Sith and who Snoke actually is. For a long time fans speculated he was Darth Plagueis (Palpatine’s mentor) but that wouldn’t make an awful lot of sense given what we know now. The motion-capture aspect would lead you to believe that he’s an alien, but a while back his appearance was described as… well, “zombie-like”. Don’t be too shocked if Snoke is an ancient Sith who wants to reform the Order with the Knights of Ren, or at least an ancient Dark Side user.

We still don’t have the bigger picture on Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader Snoke and the Knights of Ren, but we’re definitely a little bit closer. All of this information is fun and all, but I hope we don’t find out who they really are until December 18th, when we’re sat down to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens.